Large Europe Mobile Operator Keen to Apply 3G Services in Azerbaijan: Company President (video)

Azerbaijan, Baku, 10 January /corr. Trend S.Babayeva / The key goal of Company TeliaSonera in Azerbaijan is to introduce 3G communication services, said Lars Nyberg, the President & CEO of TeliaSonera, one of the biggest European telecom companies and key stakeholder of Azerbaijan's leading mobile operator Azercell Telecom stated, on 10 January in Baku.

According to Azercell Telecom's Director General, Halem Ates, if Azerbaijan's Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies provides a license, most of the investments will be directed towards this. He did not describe the exact amount of the investments.

The Head of TeliaSonera said that he will discuss the implementation of 3G with the Government of Azerbaijan during his one-day visit to Azerbaijan which concludes on 10 January.

Earlier Azerbaijan's Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, Ali Abbasov, said that the 3G services may be applied within the first half of 2008.

3G Standard was projected and designed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and its name is IMT-2000 (International Mobile Telecommunications 2000). The key aim is to harmonize 3G systems to provide global roaming. The following five standards are united under the abbreviation IMT-2000:W-CDMA, CDMA2000, TD-CDMA/TD-SCDMA, DECT, and UWC-136. There are two standards of 3G: UMTS (or W-CDMA) and CDMA2000.

TeliaSonera AB (OJSV) was formed in December 2002 when the Swedish leading telecom operator Telia merged with the Finnish leading telecom operator Sonera. TeliaSonera has over 690,000 shareholders. The biggest shareholders are the Governments of Sweden (37.3%) and Finland (13.7%). TeliaSonera and its associated companies offer communications services to over 100mln subscribers in 18 countries. In 2006 the TeliaSonera net sales were SEK 91bn, EBITDA was SEK 32.266 bn, net income was SEK 19.28bn.

Azercell JSC was established on 19 January 1996 by Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS and the Azerbaijani Ministry of Telecommunications.

Azercell Telekom is a joint venture of the Azerbaijani Telecommunications and IT Ministry (35.7%) and Fintur Holdings BV (64.3 %), with 58% belonging to TeliaSonera and 42% to Turkcell.